Jing, your favorite application that records both still screenshot images and screencast videos, is now available as Jing Pro though TechSmith will continue to offer a free version of Jing as well.

Jing Pro is unique in the sense that it lets you record HD quality screencast videos that can be directly uploaded on to YouTube. From a YouTube perspective, HD means any video recorded in 1290 x 720 (16×9 HD) and encoded in H.264 or MPEG-4 format.

If those numbers make no sense, watch the following video to understand how a HD quality screencast video would look like when shared on YouTube.

HD screencast recorded in Google SketchUp using Camtasia Studio 6.

Jing Pro, like the free version, is available for both Mac and Windows through a subscription based license that would cost you around $15 per year.

If you are not a heavy user of Jing, i.e. you only capture still screenshots and sometimes short video clips, the free version of Jing should be perfect as it also offers 2 GB of storage space.

Jing (free) support only SWF format while Jing Pro supports SWF as well as MPEG-4 video required for YouTube HD. The Pro version is therefore for people who can’t afford the expensive Camtasia Studio but still need a solution to capture great looking desktop videos for sharing on YouTube, Facebook and other sites.

For Mac users, an alternative to Jing Pro is iShowU HD (thanks Orli) that can also creates HD video, allows uploading to YouTube and costs $30 for life. There is probably no alternative to Jing Pro on the Windows platform except for Camtasia.